My Big Fat Greek Wedding (MBFGW) is a feast that resonates with another fine food film Big Night. Similarly MBFGW is not really about food, but about relationships. Food is everywhere adding a pungent spice to the social interactions depicted. In the school lunch room moussaka becomes the cruel chant of 'Moose Caca' tormenting the elementary school incarnation of the central character, Toula Portokalos.

Amidst this and other scenes, lamb being roasted on the front lawn in suburbia, and hordes of cousins named Nick, we discover an immigrant family trying to retain it's distinctiveness.

Nia Vardolos' character has so far, at age thirty, failed to do what is apparently natural and proper for a Greek woman her age. The film gets right to the point, opening with Kosta Portokalos" refrain: "You better get married soon. You starting to look old."

Toula attempts to circumnavigate her way around and past the Portokalos patriarch's expectation of her and her own resentment that "Greeks marry Greeks to breed loud breeding Greek eaters." But even with the help enlisted from a mother who knows how to get the better of her man and a doting Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin gives a spot on performance), her supposed escape is not what it seems.

It's fitting then that the theme of illicit love is framed against a backdrop of cartoon figures and larger than life caricatures of charmingly real inhabitants of the BIG FAMILY WEDDING, in this case Greek. Those of you who have ever attended such an event know what I mean. Those living in a world in which the average family comprises 1.8 children, this might be foreign and exotic territory. Perhaps this might explain the attraction that Toula's beau Ian Miller has for her.

MBFGW is a nicely shot and charming film in which even the cheap laughs are good ones. But in the end, cheers to Grandma Portokalos. In the midst of all the chaos surrounding Toula's dating a non-Greek boy, Grandma is leaning back against the kitchen wall chugging back a lite beer straight out of the bottle. We should all have grandmothers that cool. Pass the dolmatas please.